Because you asked: More on illegal guns tipline (updated)

Wednesday’s blog post about Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin’s warning that a Department of Criminal Justice Services illegal gun tipline could turn “neighbor against neighbor” in the wake of the passage of the SAFE Act has generated more than 70 comments, and numerous questions from readers. The story has gone viral on conservative websites, where headlines like “New York state offers $500 reward for reporting gun owners” and “Big Brother is bribing snitches” will give you a sense of the quality of the analysis.

Also Wednesday, Assemblyman Bill Nojay, R-Pittsford, sent a letter to DCJS Executive Deputy Commissioner Michael Green a letter asking him to “terminate the newly revised and expanded informant program known as the ‘Gun Tip Line.’ The program has chilling implications and should have no place in a free society which has, for over 230 years, protected ordinary citizens from invasions of their privacy and unreasonable search and seizure by agents of government.”

The governor’s office pointed out that the tipline is about as new as last year’s Valentine’s Day candy: It was first announced Feb. 18, 2012, as part of multi-pronged effort to fight gun violence.

McLaughlin has already acknowledged that describing the initiative as “new” in his press release was an error — although he said that the specification of a $500 reward was a new wrinkle, as was a texting option.

It was also announced on NYFirearms.com, where the cut-and-pasted press release was followed by the observation, “I must say, this is a much better plan than I was expecting. I was expecting the same ol’ ban this and outlaw that.” The very same website posted up Tuesday’s email from DCJS to law enforcement officials reminding them that the tipline existed — a missive that prompted the blogger to “want to vomit.”

When did DCJS add the $500 reward?

The original release said, “Rewards will be determined based on the value of the lead.” But contrary to McLaughlin’s belief that the amount of the reward was new, the $500 sum has been part of the program at least since May 1, 2012, when it was touted on DCJS’s Facebook page — where it currently has 13 “likes.”

The reward was also included in a bulletin about the tipline in DCJS’ June 2012 EJusticeNY Integrated News Report.

Wasn’t the original anti-gun-violence initiative supposed to be for urban areas only?

This argument was made by Nojay, whose letter to Green said that what was supposed to be an urban effort was now “a radically expanded, statewide program … (that) appears solely directed at enforcing the so-called SAFE Act. … The expanded Gun Tip Line makes a bad law worse by using snitches (motivated by $500 cash per report) as its enforcement tool.” (Let’s stop for a moment to mark perhaps the first time in human history that an upstate Republican white guy found common cause on a law enforcement issue with anti-snitching rappers such as Busta Rhymes and Lil’ Kim.)

But the tip line was always intended to be a statewide effort: As the TU’s Dayelin Roman reported in the story linked above, some of the elements of the February 2012 initiative were specifically directed to Albany, Schenectady, Newburgh, the Bronx, Manhattan and the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. But “another $1 million will go to create a state-wide advertising campaign aimed at reducing gun violence, supporting community-based programs such as SNUG and creating a toll-free gun tip line.”

Update: The program was the subject of a March 30, 2012, email sent to every police department in the state — that is, not just the six urban communities — by Tony Perez, the acting deputy commissioner of DCJS’ Office of Public Safety. Perez also identifies $500 as the reward amount.